DATE: 8/31/04

WRITER/CONTACT: Pamela Bryant, (803) 553-7705

EDITOR: Diane Palmer, (864) 656-4741

Clemson helps build a “community behind the fence”

COLUMBIA -- Clemson University is helping to plan the redesign of a community in South Carolina .The community is a 210-acre parcel with homes, a school, and a place for meetings and worship.

It is the S.C. Department of Juvenile Justice’s (DJJ) Broad River Road Complex (BRRC) in Columbia – the “Community Behind the Fence.”

Redesign plans call for using the large area enclosed on the BRRC to further enhance the development of life skills for juveniles including various employment training and therapeutic recreational opportunities.All to offer better opportunities for the young people who live there. These improvements would better support clinical and therapeutic recreational programming for incarcerated juveniles.

More than a year has passed since John Kelly, Clemson University vice president for Public Service and Agriculture, and DJJ Director Bill Byars, signed a landmark Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), promising to work together to create and enhance services for at-risk youth, juvenile offenders and their families.

"Clemson University is proud to partner with the Department of Juvenile Justice to extend the expertise of our faculty, staff and students in addressing society's most critical challenges: supporting the proper growth and development of our teenage populations," said Kelly.

Since the execution of the MOU, many creative, collaborative efforts have emerged. The most recent is a conceptual redesign charrette for the three long-term, secured juvenile institutions behind the fence at DJJ’s Broad River Road Complex. The term “charrette,” a familiar term for architects, describes an intense meeting that brings together key individuals with the vested interests, knowledge and skills to share ideas and inform the design planning process.

In June, several Clemson representatives joined with DJJ to host a three-day charrette process, involving leaders from private and public sector organizations, the faith community, and DJJ staff and volunteers. Through a series of eight input sessions, their ideas and recommendations helped formulate a conceptual framework that will guide the future development of DJJ’s facilities and property. A grant awarded to Clemson, called the South Carolina Leadership in Public Service Grant, made the charrette possible.

Reflecting on the 17-month planning period for the charrette, Byars said, “In times of constrained budgets and reduced services, it is critical that communities combine efforts to implement services for at-risk youth in South Carolina . The charrette was effective in helping us identify the best available resources for the continuous improvement of the agency, as well as the services we provide to the youth in our care.”

Ben Boozer, program director for Clemson’s Institute for Economic and Community Development, and Bill Steiner, director of Community Builders, co-facilitated the sessions. Boozer has nearly 40 years experience facilitating community revitalization processes.

“The charrette provided a chance for people who have a stake in what happens at DJJ to give valuable input,” Boozer said. “As we talked with DJJ administrators and staff, parents, community partners, volunteers and juveniles, it very quickly became more than just a design charrette; it became a cause. A design team of accomplished professionals not only had a unique opportunity to apply their design skills to this project, but they poured their hearts into it as well. The final analysis is a conceptual framework that can be used to open doors to new opportunities for the kids at DJJ.”

Jorge Calzadilla, design team member and executive director of Clemson’s Youth Learning Institute, said, “With youth development and families being a goal area for Clemson Public Service, it makes perfect sense that we would offer our collective energies and expertise to serve the youth behind the fence at DJJ.”

Under Calzadilla’s direction, The Youth Learning Institute operates a newly established Youth Development Center at Camp Long in Aiken, which houses non-violent juvenile offenders, with sentences of 90 days or less, in a residential, camp-like setting. There the diagnostic issues of the residents are addressed and teaching adaptivelearning styles are practiced.

Calzadilla added, “Over the years, any number of consultants, some with little or no history with the facility, have offered recommendations to DJJ about how to do business.

The charrette gave DJJ the opportunity to hear from people who are the most interested and most invested in the organization’s future direction.”

On the third and final day of the charrette, a ceremony was held to unveil the Conceptual Design Plan that marked the culmination of many months of planning and collaboration. Participants again gathered “behind the fence” at DJJ, this time to see the product of their hard work. Presentation of the plan, complete with architectural renderings, a creative marketing campaign and implementation recommendations, won favor and drew applause, as the crowd considered the future of DJJ’s Broad River Road Complex.

Perhaps none of the participants could dream of the possibilities like William and Thomas, two juveniles at DJJ’s Birchwood High School who helped draw the conceptual design for facilities and landscaping. Surprisingly, they took the floor to make closing remarks about the impact of the charrette on their lives. With sincere gratitude, they talked about feeling important and cared for, and expressed thanks for the privilege of working on the design team.

END

 BACKGROUND

 Clemson University and DJJ selected Community Builders, a South Carolina-based, nonprofit organization experienced at conducting charrettes, to spearhead the process. The first task was to assemble a design team of experts, including representatives of Clemson and DJJ, to organize and carry out the charrette. Design team members were:

• Ben Boozer, Program Director, Clemson Institute for Economic and Community Development
• Bill Steiner, Director, Community Builders
• Randy Wilson, Design Services Manager, Community Builders
• Bill Eubanks, Director of Urban Design, Seamon Whiteside and Associates
• Rick McMackin, Principal, The Land Plan Group South
• Grant Cunningham, Associate Professor, Clemson University ’s Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture
• Jorge Calzadilla, Director, Clemson Youth Learning Institute
• Ernie Denny, Program Facilitator, Botanical Gardens at Clemson University
• Frank A. Fear, Professor of Community, Agriculture, Recreation & Resource Studies at Michigan State University
• Kathleen L. Fear, Educational Consultant
• Haley Jameson, Landscape Architecture Student, Clemson University